Orthogonal Cas9 Proteins for RNA-Guided Gene Regulation and Editing

Abstract

The Cas9 protein from the Streptococcus pyogenes CRISPR-Cas immune system has been adapted for both RNA-guided genome editing and gene regulation in a variety of organisms, but can mediate only a single activity at a time within any given cell. Here we characterize a set of fully orthogonal Cas9 proteins and demonstrate their ability to mediate simultaneous and independently targeted gene regulation and editing in bacteria and in human cells. We find that Cas9 orthologs display consistent patterns in their recognition of target sequences and identify a highly targetable protein from Neisseria meningitidis. Our results provide a basal set of orthogonal RNA-guided proteins for controlling biological systems and establish a general methodology for characterizing additional proteins and adapting them to eukaryotic cells.